MOSCOW — President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner landed in Moscow Thursday morning and went into the Kremlin for talks with Vladimir Putin, carrying the results of this week’s U.S.-brokered Ukraine peace talks straight to the Russian leader.
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special envoy, greeted the two Americans at Vnukovo Airport and rode with them into the city. Putin aide Yuri Ushakov had announced on Wednesday that the meeting would take place Thursday morning.
The Kremlin visit follows two days of three-way negotiations among the United States, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Those sessions, which wrapped up Wednesday, were the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv under U.S. mediation in nine months.
Abu Dhabi ended without a broad breakthrough. The sides agreed to a large new exchange of prisoners of war, and U.S. officials said some ground had been gained on security guarantees for Ukraine after the fighting stops. Washington said the two sides remained far apart on territory, with Kyiv refusing Moscow’s demand that it give up the entire Donbas region in the east.
Kushner said he and Witkoff planned to walk Putin through the issues raised in Abu Dhabi. One open question is whether European countries will get a seat at the table, which Ukraine and the United States support and Moscow has resisted.
From Moscow the envoys are set to travel to Dublin, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is attending a summit of more than 40 European leaders, for a meeting on Friday. Overnight before the Kremlin talks, Ukrainian officials reported that Russian drones and missiles killed one person in Kyiv and knocked out power in nine regions.
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